This invention relates to a magneto-optical recording apparatus for a recording medium, and more particularly to a laser strobe type magneto-optical recording apparatus for magneto-optically recording a recording medium.
Disk type recording media such as optical disks and magneto-optical disks as portable media have been and are being spread widely. Particularly, magneto-optical disks (MO disks) which allow re-writing of data are regarded suitable as media for use with computers.
By the way, in order to allow appropriate recording or reproduction of data onto or from a magneto-optical disk, the output power of laser light to be irradiated upon the disk upon recording (the output power will be hereinafter referred to merely as recording laser power) must be set appropriately. To this end, an appropriate recording laser power must be set upon recording.
Conventionally, a photo-detector in an optical pickup converts an amount of laser light emitted from a laser diode into a voltage value and detects it, and an optimum recording laser power is set based on the thus detected voltage value. In other words, setting of the recording laser power is completed within the optical pickup.
However, it is known that the optimum recording laser power is varied by various conditions such as environmental variations such as, for example, dust sticking to a disk or an objective lens which composes an optical pickup and secular changes of various optical parts of the optical pickup or the disk itself.
Therefore, with such a conventional setting method for a recording laser power which is performed in an optical pickup as described above, it is difficult to set a recording laser power which is always optimum in conformity with such conditional variations as described above.